PARTNERSHIP HELPED MAKE HIM MILLIONS

JOHN SHEE was a one-time partner with accountancy firm Grant Thornton who went into property development with Joe Hanrahan a successful catering and hotel entrepreneur.

Their main property holding group, Cracken Properties (Holdings) Ltd, used more than half-a-dozen related and subsidiary companies to build swathes of apartment blocks and other commercial developments in and around Limerick.

The pair also established Mowlam Healthcare – Ireland’s largest care home provider for a time – and they were involved in a hotel/resort deal to buy the 270-acre Tinerana Estate from controversial doctor Paschal Carmody.

That project was thwarted by a planning refusal and Tinerana was later sold by a receiver to EuroMillions winner Dolores McNamara in 2012.

A prominent supporter of culture and the arts, Mr Shee’s wife Mary is a former member of Limerick’s Civic Trust and as such was photographed alongside former finance minister Michael Noonan in the Trust’s 2013 annual report.

Her son Brian, a graduate of the University of Limerick, set up an international company research firm called Bizdetect and now works at the university. Her daughter Jane is a school librarian.

Mrs Shee is a sister of renowned Limerick actor, director and playwright, Myles Breen. She is also a daughter of Bridie and Myles Breen who used to run Limerick’s Myles Breen pub on Shannon

Street. Mrs Shee’s home – known as Lishee – is just a few hundred metres down Limerick’s South Circular Road from the home she grew up in as a child.